GA 117 | How to Stay Motivated on Your Lean Journey with Dale Crownover

You're listening to episode 117 with Dale Crownover.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy Podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey there. This is Ron Perera with Gemba Academy and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy Podcast. As always, this is thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over@gembacademy.com now today I'm excited to welcome Dale Crownover to the show. Now Dale is the CEO of a company called Texas Nameplate here in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And Dale is actually going to be one of the keynote presenters at the upcoming AME Conference that's going to be held October 24th to the 28th in Dallas, Texas. Now Ame, as you've heard me say on the podcast before, is definitely my favorite conference of all. And we're planning to be there again this year and we're also going to be doing our cocktail reception like we've done the last few years. So if you're going to the AME Conference, you'll definitely want to come and check that out. It's all free. Last year we had about 150 people show up, so which is a great time. Now if you are planning to attend the AME Conference and you haven't bought your ticket yet, we can save you some money. Simply go over to gembaacademy.comame and it's either uppercase or lowercase ame. So gembacademy.comame and all the information that you'll need to save some money is there on that website. Now Dale, as I mentioned, is going to be one of the keynote presenters this year and I really enjoyed spending some time with him today talking through his journey. And and as you're gonna hear, Dale started working at Texas nameplate as an 8 year old boy and it was his father's company and Dale now runs the company. But just a really cool story. Dale walks us through his experience with continuous improvement, which is was heavily influenced with the Malcolm Baldrige Award, which is some really good stuff. And I do throw in some fastballs like how some folks who go after some awards, sometimes they backslide a little bit after they win the award. And so Dale kind of handles that and kind of talks about how they didn't backslide after they won it, which they did. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 117. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 117. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Dale, thanks for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

Dallas, Texas.

Oh, I would have taken you for Boston or something like that. I don't know, with your accent, you.

Know, I love Boston, but I don't think they can understand the English I speak.

That's great. That's great, Dale. Well, thanks for coming on. So let's go ahead and just maybe get started with you. Tell us a little bit about your background, and then tell us about your company, Texas nameplate.

Well, I'm very happy to say that my father started Texas nameplate. In fact, this particular month, we're 70 years old. Wow. It started right after the war, you know, 1946, and there was a need for nameplates. And a nameplate people don't really think much about it, but just about everything you see has got some type of product identification tag on it, whether it be a serial number or model number or just an information tag. Our forte is chemical etching for durability. We do a lot of nameplates go on water valves, gas valves, things of that nature. I don't mind telling you, everybody, I'm 64 years old. This is the only job I've ever had. I started working here when I was 8 years old.

What did you do at 8 years old?

Well, that's very interesting. At some point in time, I'm going to tell you that it took the 70 year, but we invented a machine to actually clean the flat or the sheet after we etch and paint it. And my very first job was wiping down all the. The flats once they got painted, overpaid, probably at a dollar a day. But really, that was my first job here. I've really never done anything else. I don't know if I've ever really qualified to. To run a nameplate company, but they were stuck with me because my dad was the boss. But it's been a good job for me, and I really love the people.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to dig a lot more into your story, but as you know, Dale, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation that possibly inspires them. So do you have one well, you.

Know, that's interesting, Ron. As you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of good quotes and you know, everybody really talks. You hear the one about quality is a journey, not a destination. And I couldn't agree with that anymore. But we really, you know, the one that really stand out to me and the guy's name is Kim Collins. People don't really, it's not Jim Collins. He's the cool guy that wrote the book Good to Great.

Yeah, yeah.

But this guy, he's in the Olympics. He's like 40 years old and one of the oldest guys to still compete at that nature. And his was strive for continuous improvement instead of perfection. And that really resonated with me because in a business or I guess even in life, you really need to focus on the future. Everything, every decision. You really need to always think about the future future. And of course that ties with continuous improvement. And you know, we all know there's only one, one person that was perfect. And I have no problem in trying to strive for perfection. But we all know that any goober can say, well, we'll never be perfect. So that really meant a lot to me. I got involved with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award about 20 years ago and I was very intimidated with the Criter for performance Excellence. But when I really found out that you could win the Malcolm Baldrige Award with a score of less than 60%, me knowing a little bit, I remember about school that anything below 60% was failure, it really inspired me that, well, maybe I really could perfect to a point. The Malcolm Baldrige criteria to, to always try to get better knowing that, hey, you know, if we just get 55% of this thing, you know, we, we might be considered world class. So I, I guess that's what really, that word about striving for continuous improvement. And you know, just interjecting that with the idea of focusing on the future. We do it here at Texas Nameplate. We're always trying to get better. We have really, we have some short term continuous improvement projects, we have some long term continuous improvement projects. And it's almost, it's a mindset if you can get people to always think, now bear in mind, I get in trouble a whole lot on this. But you know, the idea is everything you do, you need to ask, well, can we, can we do it a little bit better? So I guess that would be the one quote that would be more meaningful to me than the others.

So let's back up a little bit. I'M curious to just hear your journey, Texas nameplate's journey. And really your journey maybe to start with, with just continuous improvement. I mean, was it Malcolm Bobberich or is it with something else or what got you started on this path?

Well, I'd like to say, Ron, it was my, my idea, but it wasn't. It was about 20 years ago, 20, 1992, 1994, that a large customer of ours, Lockheed Martin, okay. We make all the nameplates that go on the fuselage for the fighter jets.

Okay.

They highly recommended that we get involved with statistical process control. And I didn't even know what that was at the time. And I told them that I didn't like customers telling us what to do. We'd been a customer there for 20 plus years and that we weren't going to do it mainly because we didn't, we didn't know how to do it. Yeah, real quick. They told us that if we didn't they find another supplier. I told them good luck. You know, there's not a whole lot of nameplate companies 30 miles from your, your facility there. Good luck. And about a month later I found out they had found another supplier in California. So it kind of got my attention and that's really when I learned that the customer was the boss and that we needed to change our way of thinking. So we got into statistical process control, one of our very first quality tools. It's a good story, but real quick, it worked for us. We reduced our nonconformances substantially. We started doing a lot of preto analysis. We started really focusing on nonconformances that worked. Then we got into tqm, Total Quality Management. That worked. We started getting a little bit better. We started understanding about how to improve our processes. Then we got into the ISO 9000. That was kind of cool. Instead of, instead of being always complaining about why everybody wanted all this stuff, we started being proactive in doing a lot of it. And about that time was when I stumbled, absolutely stumbled across the Malcolm Baldrige criteria. At that time, I think Federal Express and Cadillac had just won the Malcolm Baldrige. And I started having this vision that, well, maybe even a little bitty Texas nameplate, maybe we could win the Malcolm Baldrige. And I really got involved in that criteria. I joke about it, but it's really true. The criteria was free. I could just call and get this book and I started reading this book called the Criteria and I started implementing some of the high level points and it was all about continuous improvement. You got to understand at this time, Texas Nameplate, I'm not proud to say, but we were on the verge of bankruptcy.

When was this again?

About 1992.

Okay.

And I just got married and we had our first child. And again, I told you that this was the only place I'd ever worked. I did not have a college education. I mean, I'd gone to college, but I'd quit. So, you know, I really got scared had Texas Nameplate gone out of business. You know, I was literally cooked. I didn't know what I was going to do for a living. So the Malcolm Baldry's really my savior. I really got involved, became an examiner. I learned how to do all that stuff. I started being a practitioner. I started asking a ton of questions from a lot of people that I had a lot of respect for that had been down that particular journey. And really, people that know me recognize that Baldred really changed not only my. My perspective on how to run a business at Texas Nameplay, but it really changed me as a person. So it's been. It's been. Been a lot of fun. I can tell a lot, a lot of stories. Being the smallest business, which we are to ever win Baldrige, you know, everybody, it was always the big guys that won Baldrige. And everybody wonders, well, how can you win it to be so small?

When you say small, how many folks do you have working?

Well, we only. Well, right now we only have 30 people. We typically. We really have about a good average of 50 people.

Okay. Okay.

When we won Baldrige the first time, we had 68 people. When we wanted the second time we had 38 people. And, you know, that's almost another story. My dad always said be good, not not be big. It's never been a focus of ours to be big. We've always wanted to be better. I don't mean it the wrong way that you hear all these companies talk about how big they are by revenue or number of employees or number of square foot. My dad always told me that it doesn't matter how big you are, doesn't matter what market share do you make money? And that's always been our focus. I don't mean to be egotistical, but if you're not a 501, you need to make money.

Exactly.

You need to focus on making money. The best way to make money is to continuously improve your processes. You can make more money by improving your processes than you can by going out and raising your prices or sometimes even getting more market share. Everybody wants to go get more Salespeople, everybody wants to get another product line. They don't really realize that their nonconformances internally are double digits. And that's the best way to make money, is to save money on your nonconformances internally.

All right, so I got a fastball question for you now. You ready?

Yes, sir.

So one of the. One of the challenges that I've seen just throughout my career with whether it's Malcolm Baldrige, ISO, Shingo Award, whatever it might be, is that I've seen a lot of companies go after it, possibly win it, and then you come back two, three years, and it's all gone. How have you ensured that it hasn't all gone away after you won it?

Well, that's a good point, Ron. Very good point. And unfortunately, it. It happens. It happens a lot.

And I'm not picking on Malcolm. I'm picking on everything. Whether.

Yeah, no, I understand. And furthermore, I hate to tell you, but I agree my answer to that, and it might sound very egotistical, but we never got into this thing to win. We never got in to get certified. We never got into all this stuff because somebody made us do it. Now, granted, spc, they made us do it. But that's when I saw the real, true benefit. If you do this with the idea that you want to improve your organization, that you want to be a role model for your stakeholders, if you get into this thing and you do it the right way, what will happen is all these processes that you implement, they will be fully sustained. They will have limited gaps because you have put this thing in place for sustainability, not because you want to impress somebody else. This is something. It's almost like a marriage. The best way for your marriage to always be fulfilled is that when you said, I do, and you're willing to commit what you have to do from there on, every day, you have to recognize that commitment. You still got to get your wife a dozen red roses. You still got to do some of these things if you think it's going to continue. Now, again, it's just like a marriage. Whether you went to Malcolm Balder, you get certified, or whatever it is. If you, as a leader, if you do not know how to continuously put that in front of your people, in all your meetings, everything you discuss, it's got to be in the forefront. You got to keep reminding these people. Or again, if not, it will go away. It will go away. And I just can't imagine why so many people would do Shingo or ISO or whatever, and they lose it. I Don't know why. I don't know why they do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you remember the day or the moment where you realized, goodness gracious, there's something to this continuous improvement stuff and we're never going to stop?

Well, it's fun, it's a challenge. Once you finally figure it out that you'll never be perfect. You know, we, we go to church knowing that we've done wrong. But you go to church because you want to get better. Yeah. And what's wrong with that? Yeah. And it's no different at work at Texas Nameplate. Why not try to get better? You know, making a nameplate, Ron, making a good nameplate, a quality defect free nameplate, that's boring after a while. Anybody, we have a lot of competitors. Anybody can make a quality, nice nameplate and deliver it on time. That's a no brainer. You have to do that to stay in business. So what you got to do with your people is if you put some initiatives out there that challenge, not only them, it challenges the organization. Then people come to those meetings and they're inspired because people, I've always said this. When people go to work, nobody says, I want to mess up, I'm going to be a goober today. They don't do that. They really want to do better. So you as management or whatever, you need to challenge them every day in a nice, very respectful way. Very respectful way. Can we do this a little bit better? They want to do things better and furthermore, they want to be recognized. They got to be recognized. And this thing, it all ties back what AME is pushing right now. This people centric leadership, that is a cool, that is really kind of cool. And we all know in its environment where people are discovered, where they develop things and they learn how to share these talents and then once they do that, then you as management, you've got to share with all the people, there's this sense of fulfillment. What is it that they've contributed and let everybody know that they've done this with a common purpose. And that is so cool. Now in my biased opinion, I don't know how you can have a, how you can be a people centric leader if you do not do something to motivate these people to want to always do things better.

So let's talk about that a little bit. Like how do you, first of all, how do you recognize people? How do you motivate people at Texas Nameplate?

Well, you know, my big deal is respect, integrity. Our core values are very basic. They're almost biblical. My dad kind of taught me that you get people in and you treat them the way you want to be treated. They will work for you. They want to work for you, and they will do the very, very best for you. We all know who Steve Jobs, we all know who he was, but more importantly, we probably knew what he did. If you read a little bit about Steve Jobs, the reason why he was successful is because he wanted his people to be successful. And as a result, Those people wanted Mr. Jobs to be successful. And that's kind of what we. What I've tried to hear at Texas Nameplay, I go to our people and I did with a Malcolm Balder. I said, look, I think we can do this, but I can't do it. But I know you can. And just give them the tools, give them the encouragement. Nobody in the workplace, you don't want to talk about love, but you can love your employees. Obviously not romantically, right. But you can show love to your. And I know people right now, listen, they think I'm probably, you know, smoking pot, saying that. But I. I think if you go to these people on a daily deal and you show people and that you're. You really care about them, these people will. Will do almost anything for you.

So give me an example of how you do that personally. Like, what have you done over the last 14 days?

Well, I go talk to the people every day. I'm always out talking with them. I ask about their kids. I'll leave work sometime and I'll tell them, hey, I understand that you're going to a soccer game. I hope she played real well. And the next day I'll ask, and I'm really sincere with that. My two boys are a little bit older now, but I know how important it is. I try to encourage these people. Go be with your kids. If you need to leave work early, go to that soccer game, go to the recital, be with these people. We eat lunch a lot. We have a lot of barbecues. Texas is good about barbecue. Oh yeah, we have a. We're probably one of the very few companies that every month we shut down and we have a group meeting. We go over customer issues, we go over non conformances, we go over community service, we go over anything. We just have a dialogue. People want to know what's going on. That's another thing, Ron, that just amazed me. A lot of organizations, they do not communicate. They don't share. How can you ever get better and do things if your people don't know what it is? You're trying to do or how you're going to do it or who is going to do it. People want to be involved. And of course, that's one of the benefits of being small on Fridays is kind of a big deal. We go out and eat lunch and we typically. I do, I'll invite anybody that wants to go eat with us. And, you know, sometimes just getting offside and getting the soup and salad and just talking about, you know, their personal life, you know, without getting, obviously, too involved. But it's just a relationship. It's all about a relationship. You got to have a relationship with your customer. You got a relationship with your supplier, you got a relationship with your employees. It's pretty simple stuff. Pretty simple stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with continuous improvement?

Well, probably not giving up. Having faith, having patience. I really, I think if you were asked, some of you have known me for a long time. I was not a patient person. I am now. I really do think that, that you. You have to do things very systematic. I mean, you have to really work at your approach. And before you execute your approach, you really have to make sure that you understand what it is you're trying to do. I think also it's very important that once you make this commitment that it really doesn't matter when the end date is. Just before you call. This morning, we were talking about some objectives that we want to work on from continuous improvement in. The idea is that we, you know, it's all right to say we want to do it within the next 12 months, but it might take 14 months, it might take 18 months. It really doesn't matter as long as, you know, you've made that conscious effort.

So there's someone listening to this podcast right now, Dal, who is possibly about to start their journey with continuous improvement. Maybe they haven't even started at all, and they're just not sure what to do or how to go about it. What advice do you have for that person?

The main thing, Ron, you hear it a lot, but it's so true. The leader. The leader. The leader has got to stand up and make the commitment. That's where a lot. And that person has got to be involved in. Ain't gonna work if that old boy says, hey, team, this is what I want you guys to go do. It might work to a point. It's not gonna be sustained.

Right.

By any means. Look, if you are the leader, the CEO, you're getting the big bucks or whatever, and you're in that position for a particular reason. So take ownership of that, make the commitment and do it now. Granted, it's going to get tough sometimes. I got in the car and I don't mind telling anybody I had tears come in my eyes. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. But I got strong. I didn't let everybody see those tears. Now, something else I would recommend that once you as a leader, if you make that commitment now, bear in mind, from a company, the leader is the CEO. But you could be a leader even in your department. And we've done that. So go to these department heads, you can be a leader. You're either going to lead or you're going to follow. Sometimes you got to do both. But something else I'd recommend maybe to a CEO, you got to have at least one or two other key people in that organization that you can close that door and say, hey, Becky, I don't think this is going to work. And have a man, the lady, whatever it is, conversation, just the two of you, knowing that both of you are committed, that you're going to make this thing happen. But you got to set. You're going to have to have somebody that is without prejudice and has made the same commitment, but is realistic. I mean, I'm all for being an optimist. I love being an optimist. But I've always said the best thing about being an optimist is being a realistic optimist. There's some things you got to recognize. Work. We tried Six Sigma, Ron. We tried real hard to do Six Sigma. We couldn't do it now. We could do parts of Six Sigma, but we were never successful at Six Sigma. And I think there's two reasons why I never grasped Six Sigma. I tried. I just. I don't know if I would just. I don't know. I don't know if I'm just not smart enough or whatever. I have a lot of respect for Sick. Sick. I just couldn't get it to work. Yeah. So if I couldn't get it, I. I can't go out there and expect these guys to go do it because I was not in that. I mean, I was an advocate, but I did. I wasn't. I wasn't. I wasn't I just passionate about it? Yeah.

Well, yeah. You find what works for you and your organization and you go with it.

Right. So it goes back. These people, whoever they are, you've got to be passionate, whether it be your marriage, your children, whatever it is. If you are passionate about Something I think Benjamin Franklin was one that said, if you love what you do, you'll never work another day of your life. Yes. And that was what Baldrige was to me. Baldrige was not hard. Everybody said baldrige is hard. Well, come on, man. Getting your high school diploma was hard. It took 12 years. But, you know, 95% of the people kind of accomplish that. So you can't say it's hard. It's something you got to make a commitment to. You got to be passionate about, and you just got to sit down and do it, knowing that it's going to be hard at times. And it is. It's supposed to be hard.

Very good. Very good. Well, Dale, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And I got some other questions for you at the end of the show about your talk at ame. So I want to save that for the end, but the first question I have for you, you know, we spend a lot of time in continuous improvement talking about respect for people, but sometimes it can be kind of hard to define what that really means. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

Well, You know, respect is conveyed in a lot of manners or ways, I guess. And, you know, how do you talk to people? Your tone, your choice of words, body language, how you emphasize particular points to that particular person. But it's not just a person. I mean, you have to respect the process. You have to respect an organization. And I know that might sound silly, but, you know, I've always said Texas nameplay, if it was a person, would Texas nameplay as a person, would it respect me as its leader? Would it respect the people? So in other words, how do you treat these? How do you treat them? Do you. Do you. Do. Are you. Do you reciprocate in a farm that we all should do to one another? I mean, we all know what respect is on that. You know, I know it sounds silly, but around here we don't like profanity. We don't like loud voices. We like the word please. We like the word thank you. We like no interruptions. We like the idea that we call a meeting at 10 o'. Clock. We want you there at 10 o'. Clock. We don't want you there at five minutes. When we ask you to bring some presentation with you or whatever, we want you to be prepared. That's a form of respect. But, you know, more importantly, I think where I get and I tell our people this a whole lot, that they know that I really like the word respect, I think that's a cool word. But more importantly, I don't really ask for respect. I don't demand respect. One thing I really demand is that I don't want any disrespect, that I think we all know what the word respect means, But I'm adamant at text, nameplate, and even in my other. I don't like disrespect. And it goes back to what I was telling you. What is disrespect? Disrespect is when you don't listen to people. You don't. You use bad choice of words. You have a bad tone. You show up late. You just have an attitude problem with the way that. That you talk to. Not only to me, but to other people. I just. I just don't. I just don't like disrespectful people. I can't say that everybody needs to respect me. I think it would be nice because I try to respect them. But if I have not earned that respect, that's okay. But I don't think I've done anything personally to have any disrespect. But, you know, it is what it is. I mean, if you respect people, you have a pretty good chance they're going to respect you back. That's pretty.

Exactly.

Pretty simple stuff.

Exactly. So you've been at this for quite some time. You've been working since you were 8 years old. Dale, I'm curious, what's the best advice you've ever received?

Well, I. When we were kind of bad boys, and what I mean by that, you know, we were doing everything wrong.

Okay. I thought it was something else.

Before we started in the journey, you know, we had a lot of environmental issues. And, you know, and the real reason, we just didn't have processes in place. But we got sued one time, and I had an attorney that I really, really. Unfortunately, he's deceased now. But I learned a lot from him. But his advice to me, that I share this to people all the time, and I would always go on to him and I'd say, hey, Freeman, what about this? What are we going to do about this? And his deal was, the best advice I got is this. He said, what is the worst case scenario? What is the worst thing that could happen? And he always made me think that. And I do that down here. When somebody wants to buy a new piece of equipment or get a new account or whatever, we're starting to strategically talk about it. I said, well, what's the worst thing that could happen? It's a good dialogue. And the idea of it from the best advice is once you identify what you think is the worst case scenario, then what you do is what can we handle that worst case scenario? Well, obviously if you can't handle the worst case scenario, I wouldn't suggest you go do it.

Yeah, yeah.

And business is no different in life. It's a risk. So when you go out and whether it's a big purchase of equipment, it's going to cost a whole lot of money and you start asking, what's the worst case scenario? Well, we're going to lose $100,000. Well, can we afford $100,000 if everybody says, oh, no way? Well, it's a pretty easy decision. So I've always liked looking at the worst case scenario. Typically it doesn't ever happen, but mainly you can kind of prepare for that. I think I did that with the Baldrige. So we're going to apply for Baldrige. So we're going to spend all this money, apply for Baldrige. So we're going to subject ourselves that people are, say, crownover. You are absolutely nuts to think you can win Baldrige. The worst case scenario is I'm going to tell everybody, well, yeah, we are nuts. But hey, guess what? We got this feedback that is full of continuous improvement projects. And guess what? We're going to implement about half of those. And guess what? You might not ever hear about us. We may not ever meet the President of the United States. We may never have a good trophy, but man, somebody just gave us about $30,000 worth of free consulting and we're going to implement some of this stuff and we're going to, we're going to provide to our customers a much better product.

Exactly. You can't lose, right?

Exactly.

So let's say that you're going through your weekdale and you kind of have on a rotten day, rotten week, and you need to recharge and refocus. Do you have a routine or kind of a ritual that you follow to make that happen?

Well, yeah, I do. Well, you know, I'm 64 and I never thought I'd be that old, but I am.

Okay.

But you know, the good thing about getting older is, and maybe my wife might disagree, but you do mature. You do kind of start recognizing that things don't always go the right way. So. And I have those moments. And as far as getting recharged or refocused, you just got to meditate. You just gotta go to the office, close the doors. Maybe you get in the car. Young people don't relate to this, but as you get older. Just turn off the radio.

Yes, yes.

And meditate. I don't mind telling anybody I'm a faithful guy, spiritual guy. I get a lot of self satisfaction, you know, Talk to the man upstairs and ask his advice. But with all that said, sometimes you just have to slow down.

Yeah.

Yes, absolutely slow down, calm down. Recognize that it's not as bad as you think it is. And even, even if it is bad, what you're gonna have to do now, just get some help. It's not the end of the world. It really isn't. We all know that the worst case scenario is you die. I had a guy come here one time and it all flustered and what's wrong? You know, And I said, did somebody die? He said, no, nobody died. And I said, well, nothing's wrong. So I mean, I know that's kind of being a little facetious, but to a point.

Yeah, he was.

Come in my office. If nobody's died, it really can't be that bad.

Right?

Right.

So what are you going to be talking about at Ame, Dale? Because I can't wait to hear you.

Well, you know the theme on this thing this people centric leadership. And people might laugh, but I'm going to tell you when I, they called me and they. I love Ame. I absolutely love Ame. After we won Baldrige the very first time 12 years ago, they asked me to give a speech. I never even heard of Ame. I went to Chicago. They showed me the room and there's like 2,000 seats in there. And I like, you gotta understand, I'm not a public speaker. Don't. But I would just. Anyway, I just fell in love with these guys. Just a bunch of good normal people. Well, they, they're in Dallas and I've given some talks for them before and they, they asked me if I would. I think we're going to have a tour. I said, sure. You know, I don't know what these guys want to look at. Texas nameplate. You know, we're not, we're not a TI or American airline, but you know, if you want to come down, talk to us, see us, whatever. So I like these guys and they, they said that their theme with this people centric leadership. And I tell you, I didn't really know what that was. And they said, well, we want you to give a little talk on. I said, I don't, I don't know. I'm going to figure out what that is. And I know the guy real well. And I said, crownover, you don't know. This is what you've been doing the last 20 years. And it kind of goes back to Baldrige. And again, it's where you. It's a culture. And I guess that's really what I'm going to talk about, what I'm most proud of. I've read a lot of books about all this quality stuff, but, you know, books are great, but it's being a practitioner and not to brag, but I've worked in this environment all my life and I've worked with people. And I'm not saying I'm the best at discovering people and developing their talents, but you gotta understand, Ron, at Texas Nameplate, as I look around, we have probably no supervisor that was hired in as a supervisor to do that specific job. We have no manager that was hired as a manager to do that specific job. And even myself, I wasn't hired to be the CEO. I was just the goober that had. I was the boss son. But the point is that our accounting department right now, our production manager, our purchasing manager or all of our supervisors, these people were just regular people that came to work at Texas Nameplate and found an opportunity. I've always said people, unless you win the lotto, everybody's gotta have a job. So my challenge is to do my very best that I can provide them a good job. Not only financially good, but stability people. Nowadays, it's not about money. Now, I know it's hard to convince somebody as I was too, when you have a new wife and two kids or whatever, but as you get a little bit older, you'll find out it's the stability that is, is more valuable than that money. So I guess the main thing I'd like to share, and I think people that have heard me is I'm a people person. I love people, obviously, I love telling stories, I respect people. All you have to really do is communicate a lot of these values to them. This continuous improvement. I'm going to really kind of go over some cool things that obviously I'm prejudice. But you know, there's two big things that we've done here at Texas Nameplate that we started three years ago, which is kind of interesting that we're. When we do some of these projects, it, it takes three years to do and it takes a lot of money to do, but the payback is huge. We did a lot of this stuff when oil and gas, when everybody was doing really well in my biased Opinion a couple years ago. Well, everybody's had some pretty good challenges. What I'm going to really talk about these two initiatives. It's actually contributing to almost 50% of our total savings. I mean, it's huge what we've done. And I'm going to go over some of that. I mean, I can share with you right now if you want me to do some of it.

Spoil everything. People need to come to Dallas and they need to come and hear you live, man.

You know, we're going to talk. We went paperless. Yeah, I know a lot of people claim that they're paperless, but. But that's an ordeal. I don't mind telling anybody. But it goes back to the culture. You got to get good people that are willing to pull the pacifier out of their mouth and get rid of that ticket or that work order. So to do that with a real challenge, when we start working, we have our own erp, our own computer software. We created that ourselves. You know, we had the typical ERP that people buy off the shelf. And if you do that, you spend a lot of money and you probably only use 50% of it, if that. Yeah, yeah. So we came up with our own erp. Not a lot of small businesses do that. And I want to really share with everybody what that is and more importantly how we did it. But we did that with the intent to go paperless. And. And it is really kind of cool. And, you know, maybe I'm just impressed myself, but. But, you know, we. We put in. I think we put in like 5,000 tickets a year or work orders. So we have 5,000 tickets. Well, that means you got to have files for all these tickets. Well, we've eliminated all that. And you go back, back to shop. And if we have a customer call in instead of going and find the ticket, you just go. We got touch screen monitors. You just go up there and you just even. I can do it. You just hit it. Put the customer in there, hit a couple buttons. You got the blueprint right up there in front of you. You use three of your fingers and you make this thing get larger to where, you know, you can. Like I can read it without my glasses and all that. Sounds simple, but as small as we are, Ron, we have put a little figure that we're saving about 80,000 dol year just going paperless. Wow. But that's one thing I'm going to talk about a lot is how a small company of our size is willing to go out and do our own erp. It did cost quite a bit of money. I'm very willing to share, you know, how we did it, but more importantly, probably share the culture, how we did this thing, how we implemented a paperless process. And better yet, as you said, you know, what happens if you start having people that are starting to moan and groan about it? You know, how do you deal with those type of people? That's one of the things I'm going to talk about.

Well, I can't wait to hear you, Dale. Ame is my favorite conference, I'll tell you that. I was recently at the TWI summit, and boy, that was a great conference as well. So there's some great ones out there, but AME is unmatched in my opinion. And, and so I sure am excited. I want to give one quick shout out. If people haven't signed up yet for the conference, just go to gembaacademy.com ame and ame is either uppercase or lowercase. Either one will work. So gembacademy.com ame and there's a coupon code in there to save you some money. Gemba Academy doesn't make any money on this. We just love Ame and we want as many people to attend that conference as possible. So, Dale, I really enjoyed talking to you today. Why don't we just kind of wrap things up by you telling people how they could learn more about Texas Nameplate and possibly connect with you?

Well, I appreciate it, but, you know, it's pretty simple. Our website is nameplate.com.

Okay.

You can get most anything off there. You're welcome to send me an email. It's pretty simple. My first name is Dale D A L E plate dot com.

Okay.

I have a lot of people that, you know, I like to help people. And as they probably found out by now, you know, I kind of shoot from the hip.

It's all that's authentic, though.

I can tell everybody. I tell a lot of stories. The bad thing about them, they're all true.

Yes.

But, you know, back on ama, I can't. I couldn't agree any more with you, Ron. Ame is just a good group of people. They go there just willing to learn. They're like a bunch of sponges. Just a bunch of cool, cool people that no doubt you will learn a lot from. Just talk to good dialogue.

Absolutely.

But I appreciate your time as well.

All right, well, we'll see you soon and at the show.

Okay. Thank you so much, Ron.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast now. It's time to take a free, no strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma. Over at GembaAcademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge at GembaCademy.com.